River of the Gitchie Manitou

Arctic adventure. Aviation frontier. River-runner legend. While Norman Grant and Roy Moulton chase glory in their airship the Gitchie Manitou, a rival machine - sleek, secret, and financed by a fur baron with a grudge - is racing them to Fort McMurray by way of the Athabasca River. Riding the sturgeon-head batteaux with the last great steersmen of the North is seventeen-year-old Étienne La Biche, son of the legendary riverman, who has spent his life reading rapids instead of maps and who trusts a paddle more than a propeller. When Colonel Howell's expedition and a shadow expedition converge on the same stretch of wilderness, Étienne is pulled into a world of aeroplanes, blizzards, wolf packs, fur-trade conspiracy, and a vanished prospector's cache that could ruin the Hudson's Bay Company's grip on the frozen North.
He must survive the rapids of the Grand Rapids portage, outrun a rival brigade, decode a dead man's map, and decide whether the future belongs to the river or the sky - before winter closes the Arctic like a fist. Arctic adventure novel · aeroplane pulp fiction · Athabasca River rapids · Hudson's Bay Company fur trade · Cree and Métis voyageurs · steersman legend · airship race · wilderness survival · blizzard expedition · frontier Canada 1913 · coming-of-age north · sturgeon-head batteau · Fort McMurray · caribou and musk ox hunt · lost prospector's gold · Northwest Territories exploration · boy adventurers · rival expedition thriller · snowbound mystery · early aviation history · companion novel · spin-off saga